Cape Not Required... At All... No, Seriously!!!

Last time I shared something that I think often, but rarely share out loud:  Feeling something is not the same as doing something. Nobody ate because I was moved.  So okay. You take that to heart. You get up off the couch. You bring the casserole on the correct evening. Or something like that...I hope.

And then you find out there is a whole second set of ways to get this wrong. Sneakier ones. The kind that look like love from the outside and feel like love from the inside...and yet....somehow take something from the person you were trying to help. I know these ones well. Not because I studied them. Because I have done them. Repeatedly. Some of them this year.  Some this past weekend.  So let me just start with the big one, since it is mine; I have a feeling I'm not the only one.

My name is Sam, and I have a fixing problem

Here is my pattern...somebody tells me something hard. Within about eleven seconds, my brain has already assessed the situation, generated three solutions, ranked them, and started composing the sentence that will deliver solution number one in a warm and caring tone. All in eleven seconds...while they are still talking.  To be fair, I'm not doing that because I'm a jerk. I'm doing it because their pain makes me uncomfortable, and fixing it would make ME feel better. THAT is the part nobody says out loud. A whole lot of what we call helping is really just a us (me) trying to get out from under a feeling they do not want to sit in.

I learned this the ugly way, from the receiving end. During the worst stretch of my life, when everything came apart at once, people showed up and tried to fix me. Kindly! Sincerely! And it made me feel like a project. Like a problem somebody had taken on. I eventually stopped telling people things, because I did not have the energy to manage their solutions on top of my actual life. So you would think I would know better now....you would think. But fixing is the obvious one. It is loud, and I can usually catch it these days, at least by second thirteen. (Getting better though!) But there is another one underneath it that took me years to even see, and I only found it by accident.

Rescuing needs somebody to stay rescued

Here's some VERY uncomfortable math. If I need to be the helper... if that is where I get my sense of being a good and useful person... then somewhere down inside of me, I need somebody else to stay the helped. The equation requires it, matter of fact...and that arrangement can run for YEARS looking exactly like generosity while quietly making sure nobody ever graduates.  You've seen it in individual relationships, and you can really see it in whole organizations. (Nonprofits are not immune. We might be the most susceptible, honestly, since our budgets depend on there being a need.Oooof...that is an uncomfortable sentence to type, so I'm going to leave it right here and move on.)

The tell is pretty simple, and you can run it on yourself in the future. Ask yourself, "what happens when somebody stops needing me?" If that lands as relief and gladness...beautiful...carry on. If it lands as a small unexpected sting... that is worth sitting with. No shame in it. Almost everybody who has been or is a caregiver of any kind has felt it. Just worth noticing...worth even more if you work to change it.

BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE.  Same root system, different branch, and this one shows up in the smallest moments.

Somehow it becomes about us

Somebody shares something heavy, and thirty seconds later the whole room is tending to the feelings of the person who HEARD it.

"I just can't even imagine."

"This is going to keep me up all night."

"Oh, that happened to me too, actually..." and off we go into our own story, which is now the story.

The person who was brave enough to say the hard thing out loud is suddenly doing emotional labor for their audience. They came to be heard. They ended up hosting.  Ugh....I do this. And I do it worst when I care the MOST, which is a genuinely weird thing to learn about yourself.

Okay. That is enough of how I (we) care for and love somebody and still roll right over them. What does the HEALTHY version actually look like?

Ask first. Then keep asking.

Most of what I have learned here came from my work as a care provider, and almost all of it I learned by blowing it first.

The first move is just to ask. Not "let me know if you need anything," we covered that last time.  More like, "Would it help if I did this, or would something else help more?" And then... let them say NO. Actually let them. Do not sigh. Do not get that wounded look. Their "no" is information, not rejection. In my work with spiritual care...regardless of what the person believes...I have a version of this that rearranged how I walk into a room. You ASK before you DO for someone. Every single time. Even when you are POSITIVE they would want it. ASKING is where respect lives, and skipping it costs more than it saves.  And once you start asking, you notice the next thing pretty fast, which is that asking only matters if you are actually willing to follow the answer.

Follow their lead, not your plan

Trauma does something very specific to a person that a lot of folks aren't aware of... it takes away control.  Which means care that ALSO takes away control, even sweetly, even efficiently, even helpfully, can land as one more thing happening TO somebody. And they have had enough of that.

So the boring practical stuff matters way more than it looks. Say what you are going to do, then do exactly that thing. Do not surprise people. Do not reorganize somebody's kitchen while they are napping because it will be such a nice surprise. (It will not be a nice surprise. Ask me how I know.) Offer choices wherever a choice exists, even tiny ones. Predictability is a form of kindness. Ask folks that provide care to folks.  Ask anybody who has ever received care from folks.  All of which is really one idea wearing different outfits: they are still in charge here. Let them keep the pen, since they are the author of this. Not you. You do not get to decide what their hard season means. You do not get to set the pace they move through it. You do not get to hand them the lesson you think they should have learned by now, tied with a little bow. You get to walk alongside and hand them coffee, and honestly that is SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult than it sounds.

Now. Everything I just said is about protecting THEIR story. But there is a second person in this equation who tends to get quietly flattened, and it took me a long time and one full crash to take it seriously.

Have a boundary. An actual one.

For years I thought boundaries were the opposite of love. Something selfish people invented to get out of things. Then I ran myself completely into the ground, got quietly resentful of people I genuinely loved, and started showing up to the work with about forty percent of a human being present, which helped exactly nobody, least of all them. Care without edges does not last. And care that is slowly poisoning YOU is not a gift you are handing over; it is a bill you are running up. Somebody pays it eventually. Usually the people who live in your house...but often it is a bill YOU will pay...in full...with interest.

The Al-Anon folks have a line I think about constantly. "You did not cause it. You cannot control it. You cannot cure it."  I admit, that sounds super cold at first. But as I sit with it, it starts to turn into something... warmer... mercy... for them AND for you. It fires you from a job that was never yours, so you can finally do the one that is.  Sometimes the most caring word available is "no". Or "not tonight." Or "I can do Tuesday but not Thursday." That is honest. And honest care is the only kind that makes it past a season...or several seasons.

None of this is original to me, by the way. I just came to it late.  I love how Buddhism talks about compassion without clinging to the outcome, which is a lovely way of saying you can care deeply and still not run the show. Quakers (not the oat people, but a spiritual tradition out of the Christian-stream) will "hold someone in the Light," a phrase I have always loved, because it leaves the person completely in charge of their own life while you stay near. In SOOOO many traditions, service and humility come as a package deal, because the whole point is that the helper never gets to stand above the helped. Different words. Same idea. 

How do we practice any of that without turning it into another thing to be good at?

Two small things. No gold stars, no guilt trips, you know the drill by now....hopefully.

First, catch yourself mid-fix. You will feel it happen, that little surge of I KNOW WHAT TO DO HERE. When it shows up, do not act on it. Ask one more question instead. Just one. See what is underneath it.

Second, ask permission before you help somebody. Out loud. "Would that actually help?" And if the answer is no... let it be fine. Let it be genuinely fine.

BONUS move:  Say "no" to ONE thing you would normally say "yes" to out of guilt or compulsion. See if the world ends. (Spoiler alert...IT WILL NOT. I have tested this extensively.)

And if you do that for a week, you will probably bump into the same wall (and world) I keep bumping into, which is where we are headed next.

We have been talking about care as something you DO for somebody. But there is a ceiling on that, and you hit it faster than you would think.  Because a person can be well served and still be desperately lonely. You can hand somebody a plate every Tuesday for two years and never once learn their middle name, or what they used to do for a living, or what they are afraid of at three in the morning.  So next we move into Connection, starting with a post about the difference between being helped and being KNOWN... being remembered, being expected, being missed when you do not show up. Turns out that difference is where a whole lot of the healing actually lives.

Until then, may you put the cape down, may your no's be as loving as your yes's, and may you sit near somebody without once trying to fix them.

Wishing you grace, peace, and every good...

Sam